For the record, my Cisco saleperson and pre-sales engineer have always been
supportive of my efforts to run a multi-vendor network and never has laid
any of this "it's a priveledge to work with Cisco" crap on me. They don't
do a hard sell to get my business, but that's OK since I prefer to talk to
salespeople only when I need something from them... They don't hesitate to
say they're better than everybody else, but they do continue to work for me
instead of the other way around. (What salesperson doesn't claim to work
for the company that's better than everyone else?)
Having said that, there are certainly some salespeople with Cisco that are,
to be polite, overzealous in their dealings with customers. These types of
salespeople (whatever company they sell for) should be chased away
immediately. It seems that most people that I've talked to that have had
this experience with Cisco have been from Europe (not to say it doesn't
happen in the US), so I wonder if for one reason or another the Cisco
European salesforce tends to work that way. It's too bad for Cisco, because
if they'd had used this tactic on me, I would have certainly shown them the
door...
--zawada